About Time

“Under the plans, a duty of confidentiality which is currently placed on all organisations which handle clinical data would be erased, in a bid to make the system more transparent.

The current rules were intended to protect the commercial interests of manufacturing companies, but safety campaigners and regulators believe they have gone too far in putting the interests of business ahead of patient safety.

Professor Sir Kent Woods, chief executive of the MHRA, which has called for the change, said: “The evidence should be out there – so that scientists can look at it, so that patients can look at it and so the public can look at it.”